Playing Dl or DA?

Craig, long time no see. Actually my case is probably unique because although I purchased DA close to a year ago, I've never installed it mainly because of not caring for SDC. In any case that's not really the point, there still are folks that have never bought DA and even folks that have DA that still play DL. I have no real idea of the mix of folks playing which rev but my off the cuff guess is that it may be as high as 1/3rd still play DL.

Hope to see you around more.

Masochism. You're missing out on a great expansion.

Anyways. I'm revisiting GalCiv2 lately and have played DA since it released, including now. I enjoy digitally downloading games and think that SDC is a fine product - easy to use, only runs when you need it, way less intrusive and annoying than some (like Steam), and vastly superior to weaksauce like Sprocket.

It's interesting to me, with a game like GC2 or Civ IV, that people sometimes choose not to get the expansions (for any reason other than financial impossibility), because you're talking about games that are very, very good and expansions that just increase the goodness. Playing a game like GC2 or Civ IV without the expansions is like playing an incomplete game. Games like these are rare enough as it is, so why deny yourself the full experience?

Hey Mumblefratz,

Good to see a familiar handle.

I totally understand about SDC. I have the same feelings about not wanting to install any more software than absolutely necessary. My main concern is software that installs startup items or user level drivers that can slow down my system or worse, interfere with important software. I also don't like the way some software installations replace shared .dll files without the user's knowledge.

That said, I did have to break down and install SDC in order to load all the latest GC2 stuff. So far, it seems to be an innocuous program and I haven't found that it installs anything undesireable. One thing nice is that it handles all the key authorizations transparently and keeps track of version data.

The complete GC2 w/DA download takes quite a while, about 1.5GB of data, so you want to avoid that process for secondary installations. Unfortunately, SDC doesn't handle the installation packages in a very user friendly way. To "archive" and "install from archive", you have to use a misleading selection from a right click menu. First a selection to download and second, a selection to install. When using the obvious "install" button, SDC copies installation packages to a cache directory then deletes them after installation. It always downloads and never looks for installation packages in the archive directory. What SDC should do is archive always and install from the archive always. Then it should prompt the user on whether to remove the installation files or not. That way, you only need to hit the install button after copying the files to another computer. If you try it out, you'll see what I'm talking about. I was thinking about commenting on this in the Stardock support forum.

Okay, later.

Bingo!

I purchased DA some months ago but SDC stopped me dead in my tracks.... invalid serial code!

Despite trying every Galciv related code under the sun and what was sent to me in support emails, my DA codes are all invalid according to SDC. But that's not all, there is more,,, after reinstalling SDC my previously valid DL serial suddenly became invalid as well!!

That just added insult to injury and so of course i am now one of the few who think SDC is a useless peice of xxxx.

PS; i play DL only due to circumstances beyond my controll as dictated by SDC.

Yes. Don't worry, I'll get there sooner or later. I will play DA just as I will play TA. The question is not if, it's just a matter of when.

When I joined the Diplomats a little over a year ago one of the main points that was driven home to me by some of the long term members was to not burn yourself out over the game. I think I've done that rather well. A big part of my continuing to play DL is that I still find it fun and exciting and still find things to improve about my game. It is inevitable that I will eventually tire of DL and when that happens I will still have DA and TA to look forward to.

Mystikmind, I can understand the frustration but as long as your objection is more of a practical nature as opposed to philosophical then I suspect that your problem is not insurmountable. I'm sure that the folks at either sales@stardock.com or support@stardock.com can help get you get straigtened out. There have been a couple of recent threads about this subject and I don't see any great need to replicate them here as they do sometimes tend to get a little bit strident.

In the meantime, I'm sure you remember Craig as well as I do and will join me in welcoming him back to the game and the forum.

Yes i'm sure it could be fixed with some perserverance, but my view is that it should not be necissary. There should have been a link to download DA as soon as i paid for it, and avoid giving SDC a chance to become involved and stuff up.

just knowing the hastle to fix the problem is waiting for me is enough to deter me and i will simply find another game to play instead.

Welcome Back Craig it has been a while.   

I'm a proud owner of DA and preorderer of TA, but I'm also still mostly playing DL for a lot of the same reasons Mumble mentioned. I'm just not through with it yet   .

Thanks for the replies.

Looks like I might be playing Dread Lords instead of Dark Avatar. I tried playing a maxed out DA game and I started having problems about 5 years into it. Things kept getting slower and slower then the game started crashing. I couldn't play it anymore. I don't know what the deal is because I actually have a faster computer than before when I was playing maxed out games on DL 1.4. Is it just me, or does DA have a hard time with this?

I'm still playing DL, since I haven't a credit card like Visa.

There are some known performance issues with earlier versions of DA, try updating and see what happens? There are allot of past threads on this issue.

DA, even with updates is much harder on my computer than a similar setup in DL. I can run a gigantic all abundant in DL and not have to start turning down graphics options till I get up to a few thousand ships. DA, I have very little chance of seeing a gigantic all abundant to fruition playing a minimalist.

Well i have been Playing Alpha Centauri recently on 'thinker' level and even being such an old game, once i have my territory covered in formers late game, it still manages to slow my modern computer down! Right now i am having tons of fun causing massive amounts of global warming and the consequences are most entertaining!

My AI opponents are nothing more than a minor annoyance at this stage, the stupid Peacekeepers just launched a suprise attack and are currently experiencing a unit vacumm at the hands of my kaos rotors!! fun

Although I have bought DA last month, I still play DL and have not installed DA yet. It is just that I like DL very much and want to get better at it before I move on to DA.

I did a clean install last week so I'm pretty sure all versions are the latest. I'm about 5 years into a maxed-out Dread Lords game and am not experiencing any peformance issues. I am getting a little bit of slow-down, but nothing more than before and nothing like Dark Avatar. I don't have a particularly fast processor (Athlon 3800+), but my video card is pretty good (GeForce 8800 GTS) and I have 2GB of ram.

At this point, it looks like I'll have to relinquish Dark Avatar to small games, but I'll still be using Dread Lords for the serious stuff.

BTW, I would also prefer to simply download game installation files via my web browser. For whatever the reasons, Stardock has required the use of SDC. I'm not too thrilled about that, but if I want to use the latest versions, I have to live with it.

You aren't the only one but there is apparently some kind of issue that at the least involves more work for Stardock. I have to assume that there's a good reason that they no longer provide the standalone installer. This has been discussed a bit as you can imagine, sometimes rather stridently. The latest I've heard is that there still may be occasional releases in this manner but the next version where this will be expected is v2.0 and currently there's no scheduled date for that release.

I'm still playing DL. I've wanted to try DA but have been waiting for the upgrades that fix all the performance issues. Now I find out that I can no longer get stand alone downloads. My gaming computer is not hooked to internet. So I am comletely shut out!....I love DL and I guess I'll be playing for awhile.......KONK

Currently, I play nothing! I'll be getting the Gold Edition box on the 3rd and I can only open it after the 18th due to exams. Once that all is done, I plan on playing DA sandbox first and then DL sandbox, followed by the DL campaign, and then DA sandboxes again until December when I'll get TA. After that, I won't be able to decide.

At first, I liked DL better because of:

- Better engines.
- Better espionage system( in my opinion ).
- Better campaign( once again, IMO ).

But then, I began liking DA more because of:

- Super Abilities.
- Mega Events.
- Better defense systems.
- More logistics.
- Mining system.
- Better graphics in general.
- Much better ship hull designs.

Like Konk, my gaming computer is not on the net and this computer I'm posting on has a broken CD drive. So I won't be able to update until I get it connected( by mid-October or early November ).

Yea, DA does have some nice features, but after playing the two side by side, I can appreciate some things about DL. I'm glad the option is there. I'll probably be playing both, DL for metaverse and DA for smaller, shorter games. Kind of makes me wish I had splurged for the big-gun processor on my current system build. Most games just need a powerful video card, DA needs a powerful CPU as well. BTW, CD drives are quite cheap. Check out newegg.com. I recently got a replacement for an old computer for $12.